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The End of the GOP Ticket
I feel bad for John McCain. I think he’s a great person who’s done great things. On the trail he had to concede some of his McCain-ness (I’d like to avoid that other M-word which became meaningless as soon as the whole GOP started to embrace it) and I definitely don’t agree with him on most policy issues.
But, he was the best Republican candidate in my lifetime, and maybe the last Rockefeller Republican the GOP will run for a long time. Unfortunately he ran against the best Democratic candidate in a lifetime.
His running mate on the other hand… you know the drill.
And when McCain and Palin split up in Arizona Wednesday, the personal differences were stark.
McCain drove himself home in a Toyota sport utility vehicle. Palin’s departure was a grander event. She left with an entourage of 18 family members and friends and a Secret Service detail, heading to the airport in a motorcade stretching more than a dozen vehicles, flanked by a dozen more cops on motorcycles.
PUMA’s Damn America, Move to Canada
Some of the most interesting reactions in last night’s election came from the supposed Hillary Clinton holdouts who chose personality over ideology and decided they just couldn’t vote for Obama. Here are last night’s comments from Hillaryis44, which quickly go from cocky to sad and then onto racist with the eventual cry of “God Damn America,” a phrase which was abhorrent to these bitter people, just weeks ago. I guess they hate America now because someone they think hates America was elected President, if that makes any sense.
They still claim his supporters must be puppets of the media. Even after an overwhelming victory, they refuse to accept the existence of rational support for Obama and denounce most of America.
These are the scum of the American Electorate. Swayed by personal attacks, rumors, and misdirection. Seemingly unattached to any real issues and more concerned with phony narratives and firsts than the direction of the country.
6 PM: Obama Simply Can’t Beat McCain.
moononpluto Says:
No way in hell is obama plus 15 in pa, noone ever has had it more than 5
wbboei Says:
What’s with Hillbuzz asking us all to “be nice” to Obots if Oliar loses??
Are they kidding me with that shit? I plan to gloat my head off and give the subtle O’liar finger to every bot I run across.
Right on. We will treat them with the same love and respect they treated us and hillary after
…
The Voter Fraud Myth
“If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant,” Richard Hasen, election law expert at the Loyola Law School, told the New York Times last year. “But what we see is isolated, small-scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent.”
But that hasn’t stopped Republicans trying. Five of the 12 US judges who were fired last year, in the scandal that led to the resignation of US attorney general Alberto Gonzales, were axed because they refused to pursue the issue of voter fraud with sufficient vigour. It also explains the Republican attacks on the community group Acorn, which pays people to register voters in low income and minority areas. Some of Acorn’s workers made up names. That should be and has been condemned. But there is no evidence that it has resulted in a single fraudulent vote ever being cast since Acorn began its large-scale voter registration drives four years ago.
Problem is, the GOP is already setting this up as their talking point for why they lost the election, if they lose. If the margins are high enough I don’t see it gaining much traction, but if it’s close I can’t see why Jon McCain wouldn’t use this as a scapegoat, it’s too easy a target.
Hopefully one of the new administration’s new concentrations will be election systems reform.
Letterman Owns McCain
Chris Rock owns Bill Clinton, Katie Couric owns Sarah Palin, the federal government owns your local check cashing store and Letterman owns McCain.
Late night TV is the best part of the election season.
Via Wonkette.
Vote for Obama
Shaviro over at Pinocchio Theory argues that, despite the fact that the Democrats will more than likely disappoint anyone who thinks anything will actually “change” beyond a pathetic return to Clintonian neoliberalism, one should nevertheless vote for Obama:
It is not stupid to vote for McCain/Palin; rather, it is evil. Republicans are intrinsically, and necessarily, morally depraved. Anyone who votes for McCain/Palin, or supports them, by that very fact demonstrates that he or she is a person utterly devoid of basic morality, and lacking in any respect for others. To vote for McCain is to shit on human civilization, and show utter contempt for human values and human hopes. And not in spite of the Democrats’ hypocrisy, but rather precisely because of this — because their hypocrisy is, as it were, the compliment that vice pays to virtue — the only moral thing to do in this election is to vote for Obama.
(Via I cite.)
Toyota Brown
So although many people seem to be dreaming of the slightly more exciting Republican nominee, last night I had the strangest dream involving Obama and McCain. It took place at a surreal convention center; the decor reminded me of a mix between a David Lynch film and a vibrant Nintendo videogame. Anyhow, the video being broadcast was showcasing, in a cartoony, almost socialist realist form, all of the various ways in which Barack Obama was better than McCain, making the case for how easy it should be for him to win. A typically stupid “dream as a fulfillment of a wish,” as Freud said.
Then John McCain took the stage with someone who was apparently an old buddy of his from their rock and roll days. The guy had sagging, but tight white skin, numerous piercings, shades and a soul patch, reminiscent of Tommy Lee. His nickname for McCain was “Toyota Brown,” the origins of which were not explained, except that it was referred to as a term of endearment from when John McCain, too, was evidently a hard rocker in the mid- to late-70’s.
Which is all to say that from now on I’ll be referring to John McCain as “Toyota Brown” on this blog, and hope others follow in my footsteps.
Change We Can Believe In
While John McCain is out and about touting how the “fundamentals” of the economy are strong (as to what he means by “fundamentals,” I’m sure he has a very thorough answer), because to say they aren’t means that you are insulting hard-working Americans (unlike, say, actively voting against workers’ rights), McCain’s economic council is busy pretending that they had nothing to do with bringing about one of the worst economic crises in U.S. history. Worth mentioning in particular is Phil “A Nation of Whiners” Gramm’s special role:
Gramm orchestrated the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 which “destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies.” He also pushed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, which made legal “the mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector.” The Nation writes that “those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community.”
So basically, if this chart of Obama’s and McCain’s respective tax proposals hadn’t already convinced you that it’s in your best interest to vote for Obama, then McCain’s surreal ineptitude regarding the economy, as well as his cadre of buffoons, should perhaps be some food for thought.
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
Hopefully this will be the last post in a while that contains the name “Palin” in the title, but this article by Frank Rich on the unbelievable phoniness and absurdity of the McCain campaign is probably one of the better op-ed columns I’ve read in the New York Times in quite a while. If you’re lazy, though, here’s the conclusion:
As Republicans know best, fear does work. If Obama is to convey just what’s at stake, he must slice through the campaign’s lipstick jungle and show Americans the real perils that lie around the bend.
Palin
Adam Kotsko in The Weblog:
The problem with Sarah Palin is not her “inexperience,” her specific abuses of power as governor, her vague relationship to an Alaskan secessionist movement, her family dramas, or her apparent ignorance of the history of the Pledge of Allegiance. Nor is the problem some kind of “meta” fact about her character that these various factors reveal, in combination or separately. Nor indeed is the problem that McCain apparently chose her with that peculiar blend of cynicism and recklessness we’ve come to expect from the Republican Party and McCain in specific.
No, the problem is that she’s a right-wing nutjob. Under no circumstances should she be allowed within fifty miles of the judicial appointment process or the running of the federal bureaucracy — again, not because she’s inexperienced or has a tendency toward self-aggrandizement or might have covered up her daughter’s pregnancy, but because her views on virtually every policy issue on which she’s formed an opinion are insane and because she is being given a “crash course” on the remaining issues by a man whose views are also insane.
The fact that her selection is being hailed by a major faction of the Republican Party is further evidence that the Republican Party is a fundamentally illegitimate political organization, not because they’re incompetent or corrupt (plenty of Democrats are incompetent, corrupt, or both), but because they have insane beliefs or are willing to pay lip service to insane beliefs. It’s content, not form — would that liberal commentators could recognize that.
Sarah Palin’s Troubles
In the last few days I’ve learned the following about Sarah Palin:
- Her teenage daughter is pregnant.
- Her Down syndrome child is probably her grandchild.
- She thinks the founding fathers created the Pledge of Allegiance.
- She was an Alaskan Secessionist.
- She is under investigation in an ethic’s probe.
Either John McCain made a huge mistake which he’s suffering for or Digg and Dailykos are vindictive rumor mills. Either way, someone is pouncing.
‘An insane choice’
Obvious, but also very true. I don’t understand why the Obama camp isn’t pouncing.
… in prison!
When Obama chaffed McCain for forgetting how many houses he owns, Rogers huffed, “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”
Yeah, it’s from a Maureen Dowd column, sorry. I couldn’t resist the pause.
Walnuts! McCain is Really Old
This website is pretty amazing. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Has the “Surge” in Iraq Worked?
Immanuel Wallerstein writing for the Monthly Review:
I could go on—about Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, the Gulf states. The fact is that the United States is decidedly weaker everywhere in the Middle East in the eighteen months since the surge began. Has it not been in part, maybe in large part, precisely because of the surge? The Middle East today is like a large geopolitical balloon. If you squeeze it at one point, the air will simply displace itself to another point. And the balloon is getting more fragile all the time. It is on the verge of bursting.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
America: A Nation of Whiners
It is undoubtedly the case that America is a nation of whiners. It is and always has been, how else do you think it came into existence? I don’t think anyone will contend otherwise, which is probably why the media has focused almost solely and unrelentingly on the “America is a nation of whiners” sound-bite from Phil Gramm’s recent diatribe. Even the blogosphere is partly to blame for this. Of course, this focus is essentially a reaction-formation designed to obscure and repress the far more ideological claim on Gramm’s part that economic failure is “psychological,” i.e. subjective.
The subjectivist theory of economics has long been a staple of neoliberal ideology, which argues, for example, that the value of a commodity, rather than being the objective cost of the labor required to produce said commodity, is in fact reflective of its marginal utility. But on the specific issue of the business cycle and economic crises, marginalist theory fails to provide an adequate explanation: instead it has to rely on its late-capitalist ideological counterpart, New Age obscurantism, which promulgates that the problems we experience, and our reality in general, are purely of our own making. And clearly the liberal rejoinder that “it has real consequences!” is not enough. It is a prototypically pathetic response, as it accepts the neoliberal framing of the debate, simply adding that subjective reality can lead to actual, concrete harm to human-beings.
There is obviously a grain of truth to the liberal argument, but the more…